http://www.cbsnews.com/live/video/sat-scores-at-lowest-point-since-2004/
Most worrisome is that only 43% were deemed “college-ready.” Maybe the College Board will have to renorm it again.
At our school…ALL students will be taking the SAT starting this year. Many other schools,already started this.
In the past, perhaps the total number taking the test was more self selecting…going to college…not everyone in the school.
Same in Michigan, starting this year (next Spring), all juniors need to take SAT as part of the state mandated test (which was ACT previously).
Headline for Fall 2016:
“SAT Scores Plunge an Average of 800 Points Nationwide”
…“some educators question whether the new format, graded on a 1600 point scale, was somehow related…”
It seems like every year a story comes out about “declining” SAT scores, and, completely unrelated, every year we see a significant increase in the number of folks taking the SAT (and hence a change in the pool of test takers…).
Clearly the only fix to this crisis is to spend more $$$ buying test prep from the College Board…
Is it possible the influx of non-English speakers into the school system is affecting scores?
How will renorming help students become college ready? All renorming does is change where the average falls.
I thought 40 percent of the U.S. has college degrees. So 43 percent being college ready would be okay.
Did they mention the biggest jump in SAT score when they switch from 1600 max to 2400 max last decade? LOL.
It would be more interesting to see what happens with SAT (or ACT) scores year-over-year in states where all public school juniors take the exam.
Are the scores just for US students who took the exam or does it include students across the globe who took the exam. The rise in numbers of students from non-English speaking countries who are applying to US schools could account for the decline.
Perhaps the College Board is making the exams harder trying to weed more people out. Another possibility is that kids are so focused on earning a good grade in a class to maintain a 4.0 that they might not necessarily be learning the material as well as their predecessors. I.e. “the teacher said this, this, and this will be on the exam so I don’t have to bother studying that other stuff.”
Tests like the SAT are extremely expensive and time-consuming to develop and alter; they simply can’t pivot on an psychometric dime. Why would the SAT want or try to weed students out and from what garden are some students being pulled anyway?
Hurray for Erin’s dad and Erin. What would it mean for students when the SAT renormed the test to address poorer performance? Presumably, the mean/average would become lower and scores would fan out around the mean using the statistical formula to generate a normal curve. Historically, not universally, renorming a test occurs when current test-takers’ scores are exaggerated because current students are compared to a norm group who met lower academic standards. Are today’s college-bound peers less competent than their older siblings, for example, so need an easier test to compensate for their lesser proficiency in academic areas? Is this what you really want?
in theory, teachers teach their students valuable information and students who learn the really important get As. Good. Then why would the College Board in its mission to predict grades for first year college students deliberately write questions covering material that is less important to college preparation than what teachers teach? Teachers always teach to the test when they are concentrating on important curriculum. They are not teaching to specific test items because they do not have access to specific items or those areas/readings upon which several items are based on a specific SAT or ACT. Some teachers may concentrate more on North America than Europe, yet some questions on the SAT for a particular test session may have more questions on Europe. Some teachers may focus on Europe and more questions may have a European slant. This is neither fair nor unfair. Students need to be competent in both.
Practically, teachers may say this information won’t be on the test because of constraints on the numbers of items in relation to the extent of content. When I said that, I typically provided an explanation about why content would be excluded from a particular exam and as far as I recall, it was never due to irrelevance. Saying information is excluded from a test is more often a matter of test time and priority coupled with knowledge that some content will be covered later. An education means far more specific information than learning narrow content for a test.
As far as the % of students deemed college ready, students today are more likely to seek a college education than their parents. Consequently, they need to be better prepared than students enrolling in college in former generations.
Years ago, when the SAT in an almost ACT-free environment tested students for college entrance, a smaller percentage of students aspired to or even completed a college degree. These students were elites in their era. As now, parents were less likely to be college graduates than their children. A rising tide lifts all boats. Students aspirations for higher education coincided with improving educational practices and standards over years. There are more improvements needed today and into perpetuity.
@zannah, the one time I know of where the SAT was renormed before, it was made easier to get a high score.
Oh gosh no. For one, it’s bad for ‘bidness’. But more importantly, CB has tried really hard to normalize all tests across the years and generations.
Unfortunately for that theory, they have actually been getting easier.
Cause and effect?
My thought too, Erins Dadd